Harry Potter writer Steve Kloves talks about his process on The Amazing Spider-Man

As a comic fan, one film I’m very curious about is Marc Webb’s THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. The first peek at the film will come out of Comic-Con towards the end of the month. Sony promises some footage to fans who attend the yearly event. Those not attending will have to wait for everyone to upload to the internet. Besides a photo of Garfield in costume, we have not gotten much from the film. Collider did an interview with the film’s writer, Steve Kloves who has written every HARRY POTTER film except ORDER OF THE PHOENIX. Kloves shared some insight on the film as well as his process writing.

After being asked if he was hesitant to do the film, Kloves gave this answer, “I still don’t know why I did it. I mean, honestly it was one of those things where they sort of asked me one day and I actually said ‘No,’ to my agent I said ‘No, I’m not doing that.’ I’ve only done that kind of work as a favor, and there were some people on that movie like Laura Ziskin, who sadly just passed, I knew pretty well and I knew her husband very well, Alvin Sargent. I knew Laura wanted the movie to be really good, and she lived with Alvin and Alvin brought such great depth to the Spider-Man movies. I mean if you watch the first one, you see Alvin all over it. I’m not comparing myself to Alvin Sargent, I’m just saying I knew that they wanted it to be really good. I also really wanted to write for Emma Stone, because I like to write for women and I particularly like Emma. So what I did basically was, I did basically character and dialogue, and that was enjoyable for me. So that was my hand in it. And I did a little plot work, but a lot of the plot was done. I enjoyed doing the dialogue and really concentrating on Emma’s character very much, and then doing a little bit for Andrew Garfield’s character.”

When it comes to the tone of the film, Kloves wanted to write something more grounded and realistic, “I think it’s really their game, but you actually hit on something that was my concern. I said, ‘I can’t do ‘shazam!’ dialogue, that’s not what I do. If you wanna do the Peter Parker I knew as a kid reading the comic book, I can do that, because it was grounded in exactly what you said, reality.’ So they said ‘Yes that’s what we want, we want you to come in and write Peter Parker as a real character.’ I have to say, I went back and watched the first 15 minutes of the first Spider-Man…what was impressive about Tobey’s take was, Tobey’s kind of a happy nerd. Like, he’s a nerd but he seems kind of happy about it, he’s taking pictures of Kirsten Dunst and he’s weirdly cheeky and kind of forward, and it kind of works in a way. But Sam Raimi has that style that I think dovetailed to that pretty well, but it’s a different time. I couldn’t have done those movies. So I don’t know how this is gonna turn out, but I wrote this very, very naturalistically. A lot of humor, but naturalistic humor, not jokes. But really trying to make them seem like real characters. I think Peter Parker’s a great character, and I certainly think Emma’s character is a fantastic character, Gwen. I wouldn’t have done it if they wanted me to do, ‘Hey look in the sky!’ I don’t know how to do that, I can’t do that.”

Other things to note: There will be a trilogy, but Kloves has declined saying he doesn’t want to “marry it”. As far as the webshooters go, there was good reason to do mechanical over organic, although they don’t give it. Though Kloves assures that there are some cool shots involving the shooters. Finally when it came down to the 3D aspect, Webb wanted to be “sophisticated” about it and that he’s been schooling himself.